


After the Fall

by lullabelle



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-10
Updated: 2010-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-07 12:18:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lullabelle/pseuds/lullabelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd never died from alcohol poisoning.  He was more than willing to give it a go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Fall

**Author's Note:**

> First Torchwood fic I ever took public responsibility for. For tw_lucky_7, takes place post-CoE.

Jack Harkness was staring at the bottom of another empty glass and wondering where the liquid went. Hypervodka (a misnomer, there was nothing hyper about it, it just _sounded_ cool) was a very efficient way to get very drunk very quickly.

He'd never died from alcohol poisoning. He was more than willing to give it a go.

He pushed away the empty glass and motioned for another one. The bartender gave him a wary look. He didn't want to be mopping up this Jack's vomit at the end of the night, or worse, tossing his corpse into the incinerator. _Well,_ Jack thought, _he won't have to worry about body disposal, but no promises regarding the vomit._ One thing Jack loved about bars on space stations like this was that they would serve you until you literally dropped. Interplanetary territory. Any place planetside would have probably cut him off already, if only to cover their own asses. But here, as long as his credits were good, the booze would keep flowing.

A new glass appeared before him like magic. There was a thin, greasy coating from the glass floating on the surface of the clear liquid. Jack didn't really care. A little grease never killed anyone, certainly not him, and it was sort of pretty anyhow, shiny and prismatic.

Someone cleared their throat behind him, and he paused, glass to his lips. Getting approached in a place like this usually meant either a fight or a fuck. He was up for whichever. If he was lucky, maybe he would get both.

But it was a familiar voice that asked, "Jack?"

His stomach sank. He took a very large swig of his drink before turning to look. There was both good and bad news. The bad news was that Gwen Cooper was standing there, hands in her pockets, a look of concern on her face that Jack had thought he'd left light years behind him. She was wearing her standard fare, tight jeans, loose fitted tee and short leather jacket. She looked, in a weird way, like she belonged. The good news was that she was apparently in one piece and no one was holding a blaster to her head. But the night was young. 

The quick movement of turning around had left him a little disoriented and he blurted, "This isn't Earth."

Gwen quirked an eyebrow. "I'm aware."

"What're you doing here?" He was slurring. This was bad.

"Looking for you. Obviously." She gave him an appraising stare-down. "You look like shit. And you're trashed."

"Yes I do, and yes I am." Jack turned back to the bar. Slowly, this time. "Go home, Gwen." Unbelievable. Well, she'd found her way here, Jack was sure she could find her way back.

"No way. I'm getting you out of here." She sidled up beside him and took a stool.

"I'm not going back to Earth." He almost knocked his drink over with his dismissive hand gesture. That would have been a tragedy. He took another long swallow.

"I meant I am getting you out of this pub. Where are you staying?"

 _Wherever I end up_ , he thought to himself. In the past week, he'd spent one night in a hospital, two nights in strangers' beds, two nights in the gutter, and one night in the morgue. What he said out loud was, "Nowhere in particular."

"Come on." She tugged at his arm. "I have a room."

Jack shook his head. The counter continued to move in front of his eyes even after his head had stopped. "No, Gwen." He swallowed thickly. "Listen, I don't want to be mean to you, but I left. I left Earth. I _very deliberately_ left you behind. I am _gone_. Now go back home to your family."

Her eyes narrowed. She grabbed the glass from his hand and slammed it on the table, clenching her jaw. Jack could see her digging her figurative heels in. "I consider you part of my family."

Her comment nicked an artery. "Well, then you're even dumber than I thought."

She made a frustrated noise that was half growl, half scream. "Abuse me all you want Jack, but I've come a _very_ long way to find you, and I'm not leaving. I'll wait until you drink yourself unconscious and _drag_ you out of here if I have to."

There was a long silence while Jack drank and Gwen fumed beside him. She was prepared to make good on her threat.

Jack finished his hypervodka and let his rancor evaporate. "So how did you find me?"

She smiled wanly. "Friends in weird places. Called in a few favors. Name dropped you a couple of times." She winced. "Once or twice it would have gone smoother if I hadn't."

"You're not pregnant anymore."

She took a deep breath in response to this brilliant observation. "You haven't seen me in a year and a half. Haven't been pregnant for a while. Is this all you've been doing since then? Intergalactic bar hopping?"

He noticed the topic change, but decided not to pursue. "More fun than retcon," he muttered, sounding more bitter than he'd meant to. "More honest, too, because I remember what I'm forgetting."

She rolled her eyes. "Prolific. Come on, Jack. _Please_ let's get you out of here." She tugged at his sleeve again, like an impatient child. That last drink had pretty much done him in. The room spun. He didn't want to fight her. Hell, he didn't want to deal with her at all.

This sentiment filtered through his booze drenched brain, which helpfully translated it as: "Go 'way."

Which Gwen (of course) interpreted as permission to begin manhandling him out the door. She managed to pull him upright, but he was too hammered to walk straight and leaned on her heavily as she propelled him forward.

"You smell like death," Gwen informed him. "Literally. Shit and blood and turpentine." He looked a little like death, too. His hair was limp and greasy, his face pallid. His great coat was buttoned all the way up to the neck, which made him look rather somber.

"Death doesn't smell like turpentine." Jack knew very well what death smelled like. Lots of things, but not turpentine.

"No," she agreed. "But the booze does. I think your breath is flammable." 

She managed to angle him out the door and towards the lift. She knew her way around pretty well by now; she'd been on Jack's trail for a while. Jack zoned out a little as she steered him through the main thoroughfare on the third level and down a side passage to a mid-range boarding quarter, one of the ones designed specifically for bi-peds. She even thanked the Kypretian who held the port for them in a few words of his own language.

Jack had to laugh. Gwen jumped a little. It was the first noise he'd made in more than ten minutes.

"What?" she demanded.

"Nothing. Welsh vowels."

"I didn't butcher it that badly, did I?"

"Actually... it was more understandable than your English."

She glared, and she probably would have slapped him if she wasn't so busy propping him upright. She'd been worried earlier about having a room so close to the main entrance of the facility, but she was now profoundly grateful for it as she waved her passkey in front of the sensor and hipchecked the door open, pulling Jack after her. Inside, it was more or less like any motel she'd ever stayed in. But without a TV. Weird how something like that changes the look of a room.

She started unbuttoning Jack's coat. He kept his hands on her shoulders to steady himself. She discovered part of why he smelled so bad.

" _Jack_ ," she admonished.

He looked down. From his chest down, his shirt was completely brown with dried blood. He'd forgotten he'd been stabbed the previous evening. Not having a change of clothes, he'd just buttoned up his coat. He would have taken care of it eventually.

"I'm _fine_ ," he snapped. He reached down and yanked the shirt open. Buttons sprang free and skittered across the floor. His stomach was grimy with dirt and flaking blood, but he was uninjured. "See?"

"You are so far from fine, I don't even know where to start." She looked him in the eyes, an act she hadn't realized she'd been avoiding until she was suddenly doing it. Jack's eyes were bloodshot and ringed with dark circles. He was so much worse than she thought he'd be. Whatever she thought she'd find here... this was not it.

He looked away first.

Gwen finished the job she'd started, pushing his coat off his shoulders and letting it fall to the floor, and then removing his shirt and pushing him towards the bathroom. She lets him go to start the shower and he immediately slumps to the linoleum. It was funny, how of all things, linoleum would be an intergalactic constant. Gwen let the shower run, and returned to Jack. She pulled off his shoes and socks to be greeted by another bad smell.

It took some work to get Jack back to his feet. He fell forward into her, and she slammed her ass painfully against the corner of the sink.

"Ow." She rubbed her butt. "If I drown you, will you come back sober?" she demanded. She propped him in the corner between the wall and the sink so that she could have both hands free.

"Nope." Jack couldn't help but leer when she undid his pants. "Still alcohol in my system. But it might help me sober faster, cuz it'd prolly repair the damage I did my liver."

"21st century humans," he muttered, as Gwen helped him step out of his pants while carefully avoiding looking at his crotch. " _Adorable._ "

Gwen ignored him as she tried to figure logistics. Of course, there was only one way this was going to work. She pulled off her own jeans.

Jack's leer got a bit more exaggerated.

"Don't get too excited." She maneuvered herself out of her bra without taking her shirt off, only removing the articles of clothing she considered most irritating to get wet. Then she hauled Jack into the shower. 

He swayed and clung to her for support, the vertical motion of the water making him nauseous.

"Try to stand, Jack," she urged. "I can't completely carry you."

"...shouldn't have to," he mumbled into her hair. He said something else, too, but it was completely unintelligible.

"I can't hear you," Gwen told him. He pulled away from her and staggered a bit. She caught him around the waist, bracing his hip against her own.

"I didn't want you to see me like this. I wanted you to take any decent memories you still had of me and just... no, that's not true, I wanted you to have a normal... _I am not your problem,_ " he practically yelled.

Gwen counted to ten in her head. "We all break down, Jack," she told him, forcing herself to remain calm. "You lost more than any of us. Don't push me away just because you're too proud to let me see you on the down and out."

Jack abruptly pushed away from her. "Pride?" He staggered, but remained upright. "This isn't _pride_ Gwen, you've seen what happens when I let people get close to me. This is... You want to know what pride is? _Pride_ is believing you have all the answers. Pride is letting --" He knew what he wanted to say, but he had a feeling he wasn't saying it to the best of his abilities. His thoughts were tripping over each other, and he could only seem to speak out fragments. He fell forward suddenly, taking Gwen with him. "Pride is throwing around the weight of your knowledge and experience... I knew more, but I obviously didn't know _better_." He kept talking into the crook of her neck. Her head throbbed where she had hit it on the tile, but she thought she was okay. "All my fault. I might as well have just shot them and spared them the misery. Stephen and Ianto and Owen and Tosh and Suzie and Gwen..."

"I'm not dead, Jack." She reached up and braced his neck while she rolled them both over. They were in basically the same position as before, but with her on top. She grabbed the soap.

"Dumb luck." He bent his neck up to look at her better. He'd noticed something. "Where's your wedding ring?"

"So if I die, it's your fault, and if I don't die, my death is still your fault. Your logic is brilliant." She moved down so that she was straddling his thighs and began furiously scrubbing his stomach.

"Where. Is. Your. Ring?"

For a moment the look on her face was sheer pain. She took a deep breath and promised, "I'll tell you tomorrow, when you're sober. It's not a story I want to have to repeat to you." _And if you find a way to blame yourself for it, I might kill you,_ she thought.

"I don't plan on being completely sober ever again."

Gwen took a deep breath. Her patience was seriously fraying. She knew that any argument she had right now would go nowhere. Jack was being completely irrational. And there was the distinct possibility that he wouldn't remember anything either of them said in the morning. But it was completely against her nature to just let statements like that go.

Jack picked that moment to bend his knees and buck a little, pitching her forward so that she was sitting on his crotch.

She sprang to her feet, disgusted. Feeling violated, she blurted out the most hurtful thing she could think of on short notice, which was, "What would Ianto think if he saw you now?"

He didn't answer, just stared at her from his position on his back, on the ground. Then he said, "Nothing. He's dead."

Suddenly Gwen wanted nothing more than to be out of that shower. "Right. You're clean enough." She pulled him to his feet and turned the water off. She toweled him off quickly before leading him to the bed and depositing him there. She was still soaked. She grabbed a change of clothes from her duffel bag on the dresser where, on Earth, the TV would have been, and disappeared into the bathroom.

When she came back, Jack was still awake. She had really been hoping he'd be passed out. He was still very naked. She'd have to get him clothes in the morning. She could probably have his coat cleaned, but she was chucking the rest into the incinerator before he had a chance to reclaim them.

"I'm sorry about the shower," Jack said. He was putting effort into speaking clearly. "I promise I'll behave. His smile was crooked and familiar, but didn't reach his eyes.

She smiled back. "I'm sorry, too." 

She turned off the light and climbed into the opposite side of the bed. A thought occurred to her. "Jack? Do you ever think that maybe pride is believing that there was anything you could have done to change the outcome?"

There was a long silence, and Gwen was sure he'd fallen asleep when he said, "Sometimes. But if that's true, then why did we do any of it?"


End file.
